For portable electronics, chip-integrated micro-cooling systems offer the greatest flexibility in designing the thermal management approach for the system. Additionally, air cooling is an attractive cooling option due to lower implementation costs. Cooling of integrated circuits is achieved by moving the heat away from the chip via a heat spreader and heat sink and then cooling the heat sink through forced convection. This method, however, may no longer be suitable as integrated circuits scale down with technology advances, and cooling requirements become more stringent. Also, increasing computing power and power density leads to an increased forced fluid flow demand, such as forced airflow from a fan, resulting in high acoustic noise levels.
While the invention is subject to various modifications and alternative forms, specific embodiments thereof have been shown by way of example in the drawings and will herein be described in detail The embodiments of the invention should be understood to not be limited to the particular forms disclosed, but on the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope of the invention.